Ice hockey, judo, volleyball and cycling. These are the first of 20 to 24 sports where an in-depth and extensive research into top sports culture will take place. That’s what professor of sports and law Marjan Olfers (VU) and criminologist Anton van Wijk told on Wednesday afternoon during a meeting in Utrecht, where they explained for the first time how their research is set up.
It is the largest study of elite sports culture in the world, and it has only just begun. Never before has a country looked so in-depth at the way top sport is organized – and what consequences this has for athletes, coaches, sports doctors and other stakeholders.
The aim is to present standardized questionnaires to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of athletes. It concerns lists of twenty pages, it can take up to forty minutes to fill in. The questions range from the way in which training is given to the medical supervision to the financing of the sport. In addition, the researchers will speak extensively with athletes, coaches and other stakeholders and they will visit training sessions, competitions and tournaments. “We want to redefine what a healthy elite sport culture is. That has never been done before,” says Marjan Olfers.
No transgressive behaviour
The investigation was decided last year, when abuses in the gymnastics world had reached the House of Representatives and then State Secretary Paul Blokhuis (ChristenUnie) promised that the entire top sport would be examined. The ministry is making 220,000 euros available this year, and 440,000 euros next year.
In gymnastics things had gone terribly wrong for years. Young girls were physically and mentally abused, the culture turned out to be so focused on performance that human dignity came second. Girls were constantly weighed by some coaches, sometimes scolded if they were overweight in the eyes of the trainer. An ex-gymnast came out with the story that she moved in with her coach and he then started monitoring her menstrual cycle, as it would affect her performance.
The investigation that followed into abuses in the gymnastics world is also what many people know Olfers and Van Wijk from. They wrote the research report with their research agency Verinorm in April last year Uneven Shelves, with which they exposed the diseased culture in top gymnastics. They are now also investigating abuses in the dance world.
When athletes report, we forward them to the body that can investigate their case
Nevertheless, they want to emphasize that research into top sports culture in the Netherlands is not about behavior that crosses borders. Olfers: “This is really a completely different type of research. It’s about the culture for us – we’re not here to investigate cross-border behavior within unions or from specific coaches.” Colleague Anton van Wijk: „If you investigate cross-border behaviour, it is reactive, because reports have been received. This research is proactive: what is a healthy top sports culture?”
It seems difficult to keep the two topics separate. Especially in gymnastics, transgressive behavior was possible due to the culture that prevailed there – initiated by the arrival of Eastern European trainers in the Netherlands in the 1980s. There was also a culture in the triathlon that allowed abuses to take place for years. The same was true for the women’s hockey team – there the performance culture under coach Alyson Annan was so hard that athletes were belittled.
Also read: this NRC research story about the culture within the successful women’s hockey team
Olfers: “Of course we look at undesired behavior if it is an outcome of the top sports culture. In the judo, for example, that we are investigating, there have been signals of transgressive behavior – we want to know to what extent the culture is the cause. But if individual athletes report to us because they have experienced undesirable behaviour, we will forward them to an agency that can investigate their case.”
Delay
A large team has been formed to maintain balance in the research and to guarantee that scientifically pure work is carried out. The Verinorm researchers work together with, among others, Hogeschool Utrecht and the Knowledge Center for Sport and Exercise, and there is a kind of supervisory board with scientists from sociology, methodology, pedagogy and psychology.
It is not entirely coincidental that ice hockey, judo, volleyball and cycling started. They are team and individual sports, outdoor or indoor sports, which are all organized and financed very differently. As a result, the researchers hope to immediately discover differences in the culture of those specific sports. It is not yet clear which sports will follow. An individual report will most likely be published for each sport that is investigated, with a large report at the end about the top sports culture in the Netherlands. “Then we stick the skewer in all those reports and we can draw overarching conclusions,” says Olfers.
The conclusions could be very broad, the researchers say. Does it matter whether athletes train centrally at top sports center Papendal? Do large commercial teams have a lot of influence on culture? Are there training methods that create toxic or very pleasant conditions? What does it do to a sport if participation in the Olympics is allowed at a young age? Are there cultural differences between indoor and outdoor sports? Between team and individual sports? What happens to a country where a gold medal is seen as the highest sporting ambition?
Ambitious research
Olfers previously also researched the culture in cycling, and the events surrounding Michael Rasmussen, the Danish rider from Rabobank who was expelled from the 2007 Tour and was found to have used doping. Olfers: „Then I noticed how incredibly individualistic the cycling world was. I wonder if that’s different now. In any case, I am very curious about the results.”
It is an ambitious study, as Olfers and Van Wijk agree. It was actually the intention that the first sub-studies would already be ready, but there is ‘some delay’ because the research design was not yet ready. In any case, the researchers hope to have completed the partial reports on the first four studies by next year.
Can it also fail? “You’re asking the wrong person that,” laughs Van Wijk. Olfers: „Athletes and coaches must of course participate, we need as many people as possible to talk to us and fill in the questionnaires. But this research is very important for the sport: I am not going to let this fail.”